Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I can't speak for why the top winged sprint car drivers don't run non-wing shows today. My guess would be the money. When winged drivers did venture away fron the wings, it was for top paying non-wing races like $10,000.00 to win shows when a WoO show paid $5,000.00. My point was, and is, when it was done in the past the results were attained rather convinceingly. I believe it still would be. I'm not saying they would win them all, but I think they would win more often than the non-wing drivers going the other way. The sad state of the WoO today is the dominance of front row winners, save for twice when Donny came from 5 rows back. As for why more non-wing drivers advance to the other higher National divisions, they do run on pavement far more often than the winged guys, of course, and the "Big Leagues" look at that as more of a natural transition.

They can race for better money and more often and they.have to think about their safety sooner or later. Brian Clausen has been pretty darn competitive in the few times he's run.

Blazer00 is right. Bob Trostle was at Knoxville for all but one of the 11 deaths from 61 to 82 and had had enough. That was not an outlaw show. The next day the Fair Board had a meeting and they've been running wings there ever since. Any flip at a big half mile is extremely violent and the cars seem to pick up speed as they flip. The wing slows the car in the air, and cushions at least the first flip. Don't call them a crutch, ANY sprint car is hard to drive, winged and non-winged are just a different kind of hard. I've driven both (tho' very little non-wing) so I speak from experience. I know some like to romanticize the whole thing and yearn for the "good old days" but we don't need to kill more people so you can talk about how dangerous the sport you love, is.

It would be interesting to see, but no way will it happen....

It would be great to see a non-wing WoO race. Today's cars are much safer now than they used to be. There have been fewer non-wing deaths and serious injuries in the last ten years than winged. Also, in the last ten years, wing drivers haven't fared too well without the wing against USAC. It's maybe not so much the drivers themselves but the non-wing set ups have advanced and the top cars have just as much horsepower now as the wing cars. Several WoO drivers were interviewed at Eldora in May when they shared the show with USAC sprints. They all said the non-wing guys were crazy and they wouldn't want to do that. I would think they would want to run a couple non-wing shows just to prove they can. Until then, fans can only speculate!

  Thank you for the details. I remember reading about those accidents in NSSN. Those deaths at Knoxville got the attention of a lot of people, including Ted, and it was the smart move to go to wings. If memory serves me correctly a driver got killed at Knoxville on a Sat. and the Larsen/Dawley wreck happened the next weekend but I may be wrong.

You're right about two tragedies being close together. The Dawley/Larsen tragedy happened on the 4th of July weekend (July 7th actually) in '79. Two weeks later Dick Stoneking lost his life at Knoxville. It was the opening night at Knoxville in 1982 that gary Scott was killed and Trostle made his remarks about making wings mandatory. "doublenothin" is correct about the fair boards swiftness in making the decision. They did so on Monday. It's so clear to me because I was a huge Dawley fan. My wife, kids and I had moved to Minneapolis that Spring. I was looking forward to seeing Darryl a couple weeks after the 4th at a racing event at North Star in the Twin Cities. My dad called me at about 7:00AM that Sunday morning and told me about Darryl and Roger being killed the night before. I was devastated! For a long time I'd go to races and watch the then open trailors pull into the pits and wish the #25 would be on one of them.

kyle larson, kyle hirst, bud kaeding, rico abreu, tim kaeding

to indy and beyond!!